This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Author contributions: The two authors equally contributed to this paper with respect to its conception and design, article screening, review and analysis, refining and editing, and approval of the final version.

Conflict-of-interest statement: Both authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Core tip: We screened the literature on the application of DNA methylation detection technologies as well as colorectal cancer (CRC) associated DNA methylation markers in the diagnosis or prognosis evaluation of CRC. Apart from introducing each method in detail and describing the methylation status of several candidate genes being assayed, we also evaluated the advantages or disadvantages of each method. More importantly, we discuss the new DNA methylation detection methods and their potential use. At last, we prospect on how these methylation markers could be used and what kind of methylation detection techniques might be more practical in clinical work.